Is Game Box Art Horribly Corny?

So many games packages follow the same old clichés.

By IGN Staff

Some weeks ago, an image was doing the rounds of Reddit, Twitter and games forums, that showed the gross ubiquity of a certain style of games box art.

The cliché (or classic-pose, if you are feeling generous) is of a combat-operative facing the viewer. Behind the character, there is a splash, a blurry conglomeration of chaos, a suggestion of violence and danger. A weapon is usually in evidence.

There is a surprisingly casual bent to the man’s gait, a sense that whatever urgency or peril you might expect from the environment is well in hand.

In fact, hands are a striking aspect of this pose, generally held out aloof from the waist, in steady readiness. Nobody in the real world actually walks this way (except ass-hats). It’s the Hollywood ‘walking-away-from-explosion-I-just-made’ pose.

Marketing is something we all enjoy mocking, perhaps because of that nagging suspicion that it holds more power over our psyche than we’d like to admit. But there is something risible about all these publishing organizations opting for much the same artistic solution to the problem of selling us a piece of entertainment, starring a central character, involved in acts of violence.

For the casual observer, taking all this in at a glance, the products are all largely the same, so why shouldn’t the images that represent them also line-up as facsimiles of one another?

However, you and I understand that they are not the same. These games are quite different from one another in an array of details. They are merely sold in much the same fashion. The images take an IKEA kit approach to creative thinking. A man, a pose, a look, a gun, an explosion. The pieces all fit together.

All cliché springs from fertile earth. The images are here, because they prosper. Problems arise only because, in this case, they have become stuck in the mud.

To be fair, there are variations within this tired approach. It’s in those details that the skill of differentiating seemingly samey images can be found, at least according to those who create these works.

But first, let’s ask why has this particular format found so much favor among video game marketing departments?

Charles Bae is chief creative officer at Rokkan, a New York agency that has worked on artwork for the likes of Civilization V and Dishonored. He says, “It's the simplest and most meaningful way to turn something iconic and make it familiar to everybody. Essentially, when you feature a game, the audience needs to know either who they're going to play or who the star attraction is in that game. So I think it's very easy to understand why that's very prevalent in the industry today.”

Thom Dinsdale is a strategist at noted agency M&C Saatchi in London, and has worked as a blogger and journalist on videogame culture. He says, “It’s holding up a mirror to the player. It’s saying ‘this is going to be you’.”

Mario Mirek is a collector of game box art and curator of the website Gamescanner. He says, “I guess what they're trying to do is to tell the buyer, ‘You are in control. You're the master of this universe. You're the master of this game.’ They're trying to make you feel all-powerful. I don't think it's a bad approach, necessarily, but there's not much originality to it.”

As a collector, Mirek holds a particular fondness for games packaging from an earlier era. Game art was often hand-painted, experimental, usually featuring way more text than we see today. He says, “I really like handmade work especially from the Super Nintendo, Genesis, or NES era, where they would actually hire a real artist to paint something. I look for colors. I look for line. I look for something that speaks to my imagination.

“I look at box-art today and it looks like it’s all designed by the same person. You get the feeling of a lonely, lonely identity looking to take over the world. Some of them are cool and beautiful. But with the current technology, you can just render some CG, add some Photoshop effects in the back, and you've got a cover. Back in the day, people paid attention to the art. Their work would be unique and personal.”

But all that was before metrics and focus groups took over. Marketers sit down with consumers and, again and again, they point to the solitary figure as their favorite motif. This is replayed in stores around the world, where the ‘dude-with-weapon’ box art performs well.

Thom Dinsdale says, “This image is communicating a simple truth about the game in a very simple way and it’s trying to show something unique about the character and the environment. But that becomes problematic if every game looks the same way.”

Not every package follows the same pattern. In Halo 4, we see the solitary figure of Master Chief and the chaotic background, but he is in sideways profile, seemingly in the act of combat, dragged down slightly be unseen menace, and yet alerted to some new danger. In Assassin’s Creed III, we’ve seen images of the character in classic pose, but the box-art is of the savage act of killing. An iconic franchise like Resident Evil 6, blessed as it was by multiple characters, relies on a logo.

There are certain rules to game packaging. Sports games show famous athletes doing what they do. It’s unthinkable for a FIFA or Madden game to try something other than a cover-star in a moment of skill or triumph.

Most games packaging seeks to convey character, story, agency and atmosphere, but some are happy to give consumers what they evidently want. Dead Island shows a putrified zombie. Lollipop Chainshaw shows a ‘sexy girl’ with a large weapon. Dead or Alive 5? Attractive women ready for combat gymnastics. This is not an arena for subtlety.

Even like-able artwork that seems to buck trends, like Max Payne 3 or Uncharted 3 are less works of stunning originality and more tributes to classic movie posters.

How easy it is to guffaw at this tosh, this advertising mumbo-jumbo. And yet, if you take a moment, there is method and skill and thoughtfulness here, even within the confines of the character-facing-viewer model.

Take Dishonored. It’s a picture of the character, Corvo, fairly close-up. The background does not show violence, but suggests the game’s themes of doom and its Victorian-esque environment through grey skies and an archaic clock tower.

The mask and hood are easily-understood emblems of hiding and stealth. The knife, held inwards, tells us that its use is optional, and presents a fist to us. The glowing on the other hand tells us about the game’s magical properties and again, alludes to choices.

Clearly, a person not interested in steampunk stealth and dark stories will see nothing of interest here, will allow their gaze to move onwards to the colors, shapes and messages that do appeal. Those of us otherwise inclined, will stop, will see it all without, perhaps, consciously taking much of it in. This is what these agency guys get paid for.

Here’s Charles Bae. “One can look at all of these boxes with the hero as extremely formulaic and really quite simple to do, but actually, it's not so easy. There's a lot of detail that goes into just the posing itself. Some would like to say that the box should show everything about a game, that's nearly impossible. You have to go through a list of the core features, the core characteristics of the game, and how you can show it in a very simple way. A lot of times, again, mass consumers can say that it's really cheap, that it just shows a hero, but all those details are in every single one of those boxes.

“

One can look at all of these boxes with the hero as extremely formulaic and really quite simple to do, but actually, it's not so easy.

“Having a mask always alludes to a nature of stealth. You can look at games like Splinter Cell, where his night-vision goggles became iconic throughout the series. When you look at stealth and being hidden, wearing a mask or wearing a hood is obviously a pretty easy choice to go to. These are all things that were considered while working on the box. How do we convey stealth? How do we convey that this game is more than stealth, too, that there is a choice? You'll see in gaming and key art, that crossing of the hands pose is actually quite popular, right? You've seen that in Hitman. You've seen that in Assassin's Creed. You see it now in Dishonored. There are other games that have it. Even Injustice, the DC fighting game, if you look on the back of the game you see Wonder Woman with that crossed pose as well. For Dishonored, it has a special meaning, because it's not only a sign of action, it's also a sign of trying to be hidden and trying to be covert. Also, it shows the choices in the game. When you play, you're empowered to not only use combat, but to use powers. To be able to feature a melee weapon, a sword, and to show the power in his left hand as well, that was really important to communicate.”

So even within formulae, there are ideas at work, progressing game art in new directions. In the old days, box art would actually spell out what went on in the game. “Non-Stop Combat Action!” or some-such drivel. That’s rare nowadays. Marketers want to see a logo and perhaps some review clips, but they want the image to do most of the talking. So the clichés have moved on from words and phrases into the language of imagery. And, as with all languages, certain phrases become shorthand, their usefulness conceals their commonplace dreariness. They, like the man with the gun, become hackneyed and trite and so creative people move in to find something fresh, so it too can take its journey from cool to commonplace to corny.